Some of you may be familiar with the extremely heavy 23" gauge 0-4-0Ts that Porter built for the Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. to move ingot trains at their Pittsburgh Works. Several of them went to Crown Metal Products in Wyano, PA and two eventually made their way up to Benkart's Rigging in Cranberry, PA. In 1998 I stumbled across the locomotives, No. 58 and 59, and made a tentative deal with Mr. Benkart to purchase the 58 for $5,000.

However, I was saddled with the reality that I owned no land and really had nowhere to move it to, so that deal fell through. Benkart sorely needed the space that the locomotives occupied, and after my friend and I noticed that one of the cylinders on 59 had frozen and broke, Benkart decided to scrap the 59. Through a post here on RYPN we found a taker for the boiler, the Niles Canyon RR in California, and it went west, the frame was cut up and the drivers, rods and misc. other parts were set aside.

That ended my involvement with the two locomotives. I did not know what had become of the 58, but a few years later discovered that it had been moved to the J.S. Company in Middlefield, OH, and that Pete Jedlicka, a good friend of mine, had purchased it from Jonas. Recently while in search of a steam locomotive project for us to work on at Youngstown Steel Heritage I made a deal with Pete to purchase the 58 and to move it to Youngstown for a full restoration to its original appearance, including a return to operation.

Since the 58 is a steel mill locomotive it fits into our mission at Youngstown Steel Heritage. Although not specifically of Youngstown significance, it is similar to countless small Porters built for steel mill service. The 58 is not your typical two footer. In working order it weighed 93,000 lbs., has frames of SOLID steel plate, solid steel drivers and even the bottom plates of the saddle tank was 4" thick. It was built to pack as much tractive effort as possible into a package 20' long, 6' wide and 8' tall. The locomotive also does not have many of the standard appliances found on other locomotives such as brakes, headlights, bell or even coal storage capacity. It was built strictly for moving extremely heavy ingot buggies within a tightly confined area, and apparently was fueled in between switching moves from trackside piles of coal located in strategic areas.

I am making arrangements for moving the 58 to Youngstown, and over the past couple of weeks I have been laying 23" gauge track for it to roll on. I am using 100 lb. RB section rail laid mostly on steel ties bolted with no. 62 crane rail clips. This includes a 40' radius curve, about as sharp as I dare take the loco over. The track will extend about 300' to the end of our property and will have at least two sidings that run back toward our main building.

The ultimate goal is to construct a small fleet of ingot mold buggies, have some new ingot molds and ingots made, and get to the point where we can demonstrate the entire ingot teeming and stripping process. For those who are not familiar, the old way of making steel involved pouring molten steel out of a bottom pour teeming ladle into cast iron ingot molds. The steel solidified into ingots which were then rolled in a blooming mill and finishing mills to finished shapes. Today continuous casting has eliminated ingots from all but small specialty steel mills. The ingot molds are carried on small extremely heavy flatcars known as ingot buggies. The ingots are teemed while the molds are on the buggies, and then they are moved out into a yard to solidify. After a certain period of time these trains are moved to the stripper where a specially outfitted overhead crane pulls the molds off of the ingots and then placed the molds on a train of empty buggies on an adjacent track. The train of stripped ingots then move to the soaking pits and the train of empty molds goes back to the Open Hearth to be teemed again.

Now that we have the locomotive, we will work on its restoration while simultaneously designing the new ingot buggies and molds. When completed, the new "ingot mold railway" will fill a gap in rail preservation by focusing on the specialized industrial side of railroading that most other museums overlook.

Attachments:

File comment: J&L 58 as she appears now. Imagine that, 45 tons of steam locomotive in a package as small as a Jeep Liberty.IMG_5785 small.jpg [ 159.3 KiB | Viewed 7404 times ]

Does anything remain of the Jones and Laughlin Steel plant where this operated? Perhaps a switch or some specialwork could be unearthed from a place where it has been forgotten. I would be surprised, but finding an original service car would be a nice discovery. What a neat project, and thanks for keeping us posted.O. Andersonmoderator for the 18-23" gauge railway discussion grouphttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/18inch

David H. Hamley

Post subject: Re: Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. Porter 0-4-0T No. 58

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:31 pm

Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2004 3:07 pmPosts: 643

In common with the nearby USS Homestead Works the South Side portion J&L Pittsburgh Works has been essentially wiped clean and the property turned into yet another shopping and dining area. The 23" ga. system was confined to one older part of the plant and I do not believe there is any trace of it remaining. That huge fleet of locos like 58 had been replaced in the 1950s by just two 45 ton 4 wheel GE diesels, suggesting that its role in the plant was already reduced by the mid-1950s. Oddly enough a tiny Plymouth was added to the 23" ga. in later years, but it was only something like 4 tons, hence for a function not related to what the Porters or the GE's did.

Steamers weren't the only "ingots with wheels." During the scrapping of Homestead Works I found a 4 wheel 30" ga. Davenport that was originally built for the USS Edgar Thomson Works. There was in its cab a scale ticket that indicated that this loco had been scaled at 144,500 lbs. No wonder the narrow gauge at Homestead ran on 115 lb. rail--the same as standard gauge. Dual gauge 30/std. track looked like something from a Lionel tinplate set, 3 huge rails.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV

Post subject: Re: Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. Porter 0-4-0T No. 58

Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2014 1:41 pm

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pmPosts: 8516Location: Baltimore, MD

The J&L mill, last steel mill functioning in the "Steel City" at the time, was in the process of being shut down when the Chessie Safety Express I rode on in July 1981 barrelled past it.

The north side (blast furnaces) was redeveloped as the Pittsburgh Technology Center, and the south side (across the river, milling) was redeveloped as a commercial and residential development. The Hot Metal Bridge on the Monongahela Connecting RR connecting the two mills survives, converted to road and trail use.

Although it's entirely possible that a surviving slab car or whatever lingers somewhere in the complex on display, as I recall the redevelopers took a "scorched earth" policy towards the "brownfield" of the former plant. Some of the "then and now" photos I have seen are staggering in the change. So: Don't get your hopes up there.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV

Post subject: Re: Jones & Laughlin Steel Co. Porter 0-4-0T No. 58

Posted: Fri Dec 05, 2014 1:34 am

Joined: Sun Aug 22, 2004 1:51 pmPosts: 8516Location: Baltimore, MD

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